This week, until 20 December, you can purchase No Ordinary Man (book 1) from Kevin Mayhew Ltd at a 10 per cent discount, using the code ORDINARY110 when ordering the title from the company’s website. With the book normally retailing at £24.99, that’s a saving of £2.50. Just type the code into the relevant box at the online checkout between the dates given.
Here, meanwhile, is the second of the sessions I’ll be posting this week from the book, to run alongside this promotion.
WHY ME?
Reading
In the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent by God to a town in Galilee called Nazareth, to a virgin engaged to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David. The virgin’s name was Mary. And he came to her and said, ‘Greetings, favoured one! The Lord is with you.’ But she was much perplexed by his words and pondered what sort of greeting this might be. The angel said to her, ‘Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favour with God. And now, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you will name him Jesus. He will be great, and will be called the Son of the Most High, and the Lord God will give to him the throne of his ancestor David. He will reign over the house of Jacob for ever, and of his kingdom there will be no end.’ Mary said to the angel, ‘How can this be, since I am a virgin?’ The angel said to her, ‘The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be holy; he will be called Son of God. And now, your relative Elizabeth in her old age has also conceived a son; and this is the sixth month of her who was said to be barren. For nothing will be impossible with God.’ Then Mary said, ‘Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.’ Then the angel departed from her. Luke 1:26-38
The meditation of Mary, Mother of Jesus
Why me?
That’s what I kept on asking myself.
Why me?
I mean, it was obvious what people were going to say, wasn’t it?
The sly looks,
the knowing grins,
the wagging tongues.
And Joseph?
Well, he really hit the roof.
Furious he was, and who can blame him?
If we’d been married it would have been different,
but engaged – it was bound to cause a scandal.
And it hurt, more than anyone will know;
I never realised people could be so cruel.
I didn’t even want a baby, that’s what made it worse;
it was the last thing on my mind.
I was still young,
not ready for that kind of responsibility,
wanting to enjoy life a little.
I could have done without those sleepless nights,
the endless washing,
the countless extra demands.
And believe me, it didn’t get any easier.
Well, it never does, does it?
I’ll never forget how he disappeared like that
on the way back from Jerusalem –
a right old panic he had us in.
But was he sorry?
Well, if he was he had a funny way of showing it.
‘You should have known where to find me,’ he said –
‘My Father’s house, where else?’
Cheeky monkey!
And then, just when life was plodding along nicely,
back on an even keel,
he went swanning off into the wilderness to be baptised.
Oh, I know he had to make his own way, don’t get me wrong,
but I couldn’t help feeling
he was getting mixed up in something dangerous.
And so it proved.
We could all see it coming,
all except him apparently.
He said the wrong things
to the wrong people
in the wrong places,
and there could only be one result.
It nearly broke my heart to watch it –
my beautiful boy, broken and bleeding,
struggling with that cross,
hanging in agony.
But then he looked down,
not at the rest of them
but at me.
And in his eyes was such love,
such care,
such tenderness!
I saw suddenly the eyes of God looking at me
through the eyes of my child,
and I asked myself then,
as I’d asked so many times before,
yet differently this time,
so very differently:
Why me?
Why me?
Reading
. . . Meanwhile, standing near the cross of Jesus were his mother, and his mother’s sister,
Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary Magdalene. When Jesus saw his mother and the disciple
whom he loved standing beside her, he said to his mother, ‘Woman, here is your son.’ Then
he said to the disciple, ‘Here is your mother.’ And from that hour the disciple took her into
his own home. John 19:25-27
Prayer
Loving God, sometimes we cannot help but ask ‘Why?’
‘Why me? Why this? Why anything?’
There is so much we do not understand,
so much that apparently contradicts our faith,
so much that leaves us groping for answers.
And all too easily we feel guilty about having such questions,
afraid that somehow we are letting the side down through doing so.
Yet in our hearts we know there is no point pretending,
for we can never deceive you.
So help us rather to admit honestly
there are things we cannot make sense of,
and to trust that though we may never understand,
you do.
Amen.